Holden Caulfield's Implicature

Speranza

 Holden Caulfield, the seventeen-year-old narrator, is in a resthome in California, looking back on events which happened around Christmas. 

Having been expelled from Fencey Prep, a boys' school in Pennsylvania, Holden pays a final visit to Mr Spencer, his history teacher. 

The latter lectures him on his poor scholarship.

When Spencer suddenly tries to sell him an old Navajo blanket for no apparent reason, Holden excuses himself and leaves in a hurry. 

Outside his dorm he meets Mr Ossenburger, an "old fart" after whom one of the wings of the school was named. 

In his room Holden is briefly visited by Ackley, a sensitive boy whom Holden admires. 

Later Stradlater, Holden's room-mate, arrives. 

An argument flares up between the two boys about Jane Gallagher, Mr Ossenburger's stepdaughter. 

In the ensuing fight Holden is beaten, after which he finishes packing and leaves. 

On the train to New York he has a conversation with a woman who turns out to be Mrs Yester, the mother of one of the few classmates he likes. 

In NYC, Holden checks into a second-rate hotel. 

After midnight, in the hotel's night club, he dances with three girls from Seattle and has a heated discussion with one of them about the Statue of Liberty. 

In the hotel lobby he recalls an afternoon with Jane Gallagher during which they played checkers. 

Eventually she annoyed him by constantly putting all his kings in the back row. 

Later he has an argument with a prostitute and her pimp about the impending dollar crisis.

 Next morning, at a sandwich bar near Grand Central Station, he meets two nuns. 

After an enchanting conversation he inexplicably tries to steal their straw baskets. 

Then he has a date with Sally Hayes, a rather plump girl who considers herself an ice-skating champion. 

Holden tries to persuade her to drive with him to Vermont in the near future and live in a cabin camp in the woods.

Reluctantly she agrees.

In the evening, feeling lonely, Holden finally decides to go home and see his kid sister Phoebe. 

Fortunately, their parents are out. 

When she challenges him to name one thing in life that he likes, Holden eventually admits that he liked playing baseball with his brother Allie in a rye field near a duck pond in the vicinity of Central Park South. 

Although it is quite late, Holden then visits a former teacher of his, Mr Antolini. 

However, he has to leave rather suddenly because the spaghetti served by Mrs Antolini have a devastating effect on his stomach.

In the morning, suffering from diarrhea and vainly attempting to get a lift from the Holland Tunnel to the West, he tries to meet Phoebe at her school. 

Unfortunately, the principal catches him writing obscene words on the school walls and threatens to call the police. 

After a while he finally does meet Phoebe.

She drags a big suitcase with her, intending to go West with him. 

When, however, she inadvertently opens it, thus spilling all her belongings on the ground, they decide to go to the carrousel in Central Park instead. 

Phoebe goes for a ride on it, although she claims she is too small. 

Holden just watches her falling off now and then until the smoke from his cigarette gets in his eyes and he decides to take a Greyhound bus to California in order to visit his brother D.B. in Hollywood and possibly collaborate with him on writing movie scripts.